she hadn’t actually been allowed to get a word in.
‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you?’ Gabriel smirked. ‘Trust me when I tell you that I know otherwise.’ He paused. ‘So, you still haven’t said why you’re late.’
‘I...er... Gabriel, I was out last night...’ This was hardly the crisp speech she had mentally rehearsed on her way to the office, but she hadn’t foreseen a hijacking of her prepared agenda by her unpredictable boss. ‘I went to a club, in actual fact.’
‘A club? On a Thursday?’
‘Yes, Gabriel! It’s actually not that unusual. In fact, the club was packed. Because people do that—they go to clubs. Even on Thursdays!’ But Abby knew that she was red as a beetroot and getting more flustered by the second when she thought about what had taken her out of her comfort zone to the club. An Internet date. Rather, someone she had met on a dating app who had seemed very promising at the start of the evening, when they had been having a tame drink at a very civilised bar in the city. True, she had had to resist glancing at her watch every so often, and had had to keep reminding herself that after two years of celibacy it was high time she jumped back into the dating pool, but even so...
Well, he hadn’t been an ogre. Nice looking, wire-rimmed specs and a suit and a decent job at a large accountancy firm.
There’d been no reason for her not to go to the club with him. How was she to know that after four hours what had started out as nice enough would develop into interminably dull?
Maybe that was why she had started looking around her. The music had been loud and she had had a few minutes’ reprieve while he had braved the crowds at the bar to replenish their drinks, ignoring her protests that it was time she went home.
The outfit she had chosen to wear, something that shrieked ‘smart bar’ and definitely not ‘hip club’, had been uncomfortable and itchy in the overheated, dark room, and people-watching had been a distraction to stop herself from jettisoning her date and sprinting to the nearest exit.
She hadn’t expected to recognise anyone. She didn’t mix with people who went to clubs. In fact, her circle of friends was tiny and limited to the girls she played tennis with once a week and a handful of university friends who spent more time planning to get together than actually getting together.
It had been hot, it had been dark but she hadn’t been able to miss Lucy, Gabriel’s fiancée. How could you miss someone with waist-long white-blonde hair, legs that went on for ever and a body that made men stop in their tracks and do a double-take?
Lucy Jackson was a catwalk model with the sweetest of personalities and, not only had Abby been shocked to see her dancing with abandon in a club, she had been even more shocked to see her getting more than a little comfortable with a guy who was as beautiful as she was.
Shock had given way to confusion and then anger because how on earth could she do that to Gabriel?
She’d spent so long staring in horror that it had been little surprise that Lucy had half-turned and caught her eye. For the following hour, Abby had almost wished herself back with the interminably boring accountant, because a tearful Lucy had cornered her and dragged her off to the quietest spot in the nightclub, where the sound from the music was still so loud that Abby had been able to feel her brains rattling around in her head.
‘I thought I could marry Gabriel!’ Lucy had half-wept. ‘It’s not that I don’t care about him, but...he’s just not my type. Mummy and Daddy were so happy when he proposed but I just can’t... He’s so...so...serious, always working and stuff...’
Abby had bit down the very natural retort that sprawling technology empires that raked in billions every year didn’t get that way under the guiding hand of someone who holidayed and partied all year long.
‘I wish you hadn’t seen...you know...’ Lucy had chewed her lip anxiously but then had brightened. ‘But Rupe really gets me. He’s a model like me and he doesn’t get all funny about having a good time. I know he’s not eligible like Gabriel, and honestly, Abby, Daddy’s going to kill me, but I just can’t go through with it. Now you know, please, please, please could you tell Gabriel? He’s going to go mad and I know I’ll just cave in because I hate making a fuss...’
Abby had been appalled.
‘Tell him?’ she had bellowed above the bass beat of the music. ‘Lucy, are you mad?’ But sweet-natured Lucy had proved that everyone had a mulish side. She had dug her heels in, pleaded and begged, shed some tears and Abby had cracked.
Which didn’t make it any easier now, standing here having dragged her boss back from his wild speculations.
She took a deep breath and said casually, ‘You’ll never guess who I bumped into at the club.’
Gabriel looked at her narrowly. ‘I’m sensing we’re getting to the heart of the matter now,’ he said drily. ‘So, instead of going round the houses, why not just spit it out?’ He spread his arms wide in a gesture of benevolent magnanimity. ‘I think you’ll find that I’m pretty unshockable when it comes to finding out what happens in clubs. There’s a very good reason I stopped frequenting all but my private one.’
Abby was aware that time was passing. Gabriel, workaholic that he was, didn’t seem unduly bothered but there were never sufficient hours in the day for her and she wasn’t enthusiastic about hanging around until late in the evening, having been the messenger of bad tidings. She had no idea how Gabriel was going to take what she had to tell him but she foresaw an uncomfortable day ahead for herself.
‘I saw Lucy there.’
‘Fiancée Lucy?’
‘The same.’ She looked at him, head cocked to one side.
‘If you’re expecting me to have a jealous meltdown,’ Gabriel inserted wryly, ‘Then you’ll be waiting a long time. Lucy is her own person and, if she wants to go to a nightclub, then she’s more than welcome to do that.’ He was momentarily distracted as he wondered who Abby had gone to the nightclub with. A band of women, all drinking cocktails and dancing around handbags? Had she gone there to pick a man up? Surely not? But why not? She was in her mid-twenties and, whilst she might dress like someone twice her age, there was something captivating about her face.
Gabriel took a couple of minutes to dwell on what it was that seemed to hold one’s attention for a little longer than was strictly necessary. It wasn’t as though she was beautiful. Lucy was beautiful, he thought absently, with her tall, rangy body and her long blonde hair. Abby’s looks ran to unusual, intelligent, characteristics that shouldn’t set the imagination alive with curiosity but somehow did.
She had shoulder-length dark hair which was usually tied back and grey eyes fringed with surprisingly lush lashes and well-defined brows. And her mouth was sexy. It wasn’t the first time Gabriel had clocked that about his very efficient, very controlled and deliberately in-the-background secretary, but it was the first time he wasn’t controlling his imagination—and maybe that was because he was now picturing her in a club. A hot, sweaty, noisy club surrounded by gyrating bodies in skimpy clothing.
Involuntarily, his dark eyes roved over her body. As always, she was neatly turned out in a white blouse, a grey, knee-length skirt and flat, black, sensible pumps. Just the sort
